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CHILDREN of ITALY 



Everybody helped gather the big purple 
clusters of grapes 




















CHILDREN OF 
ITALY 


By 

M. DOROTHY MAWDSLEY 

Drawings by 

RUTH KELLOGG V 

T 


THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 

CHICAGO 

1931 

















TZi 

• M 45"2. 

ck 

Q-Opcj A 


Copyright, 1931, by 
THOMAS S. ROCKWELL CO. 

CHICAGO 



Printed in' United States of America 


©CIA 40593 

AUG -3 1931 { 



CONTENTS 


I The City of the Lily 7 

Little shops—Boys and girls of Florence — 
Savonarola—Picture galleries—Artists 

II Housekeeping in Town 14 

Copper pans for cooking—Bargaining at the 
chicken market—Bowls of flowers 

III Holidays in Florence 21 

Cath edrals — The baptistery — The Pazzi 
festa—The day of the crickets—Gardens 

IV Housekeeping in the Country 26 

Leaning tower of Pisa — Galileo—Small 
farms—Country children—Country food 

V In the Fields 35 

Saint Johns Day—Harvesting the wheat — 
Picking the olives—The silkworm 

VI Siena and the Palio 44 

The race named the Palio—An exciting day 
spent wandering about in Siena 

VII Southern Italy 49 

A visit to Rome—The Colosseum — Mt. Ve¬ 
suvius—People of Naples—Gay carts 

VIII Northern Italy 58 

A visit to Genoa—A ride in a gondola in 


Venice—Glass blowers—Pigeons at St. Marfas 



Chapter I 


THE CITY OF THE LILY 
MBERTO RUCELLAI’S father kept a 



jewelry shop in Florence, a lovely city 
in the northern part of Italy. The yellow 
river Arno flows through the pleasant Italian 
city. On each side of the sluggish river big 
stone houses line the banks, and here and there 
bridges let the people cross from one part of the 
city to the other. One of these bridges is called 
the Ponte Vecchio, which means in Italian, the 
old bridge. It would seem very funny to us, 
for all along it is crowded with little shops that 
mostly belong to jewelers. Rucellai’s shop was 
one of these. The little windows that faced 
the street were filled with brooches, rings, and 
chains. There were pink coral necklaces and 
brooches that had come from Naples, blue tur¬ 
quoise pins shaped like the Florentine lily, and 
lovely pieces of mosaic from Venice. 


8 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 



Every day Umberto looked from the back 
of the little shop, where the workroom was, 
down on the water below. When the river 
was low he could see the great streaks which 
the water had made across the lower part of 
the houses. 

Umberto lived near the bridge on a street 
called Via de’ Bardi. It was a narrow street 
that made a sharp turn from one end of the 
bridge and climbed a high hill. He would 
walk along it till he came to the big stone 
house which he knew was his and then climb 
up three stories to the apartment where he 
lived. There his mother and his little sister, 
Urbana, were always glad to see him again. 
His mother had her black hair parted in the 
middle and drawn around her head in a big 
braid. She had a high round forehead, straight 
eyebrows, eyes that were oval shaped, and the 
kindest smile in the world. 

When he was smaller, his mother used to 
take him to the Pitti Art Gallery, and he would 
stand before a beautiful round picture of Mary 
and the little Christ Child. His mother used 






THE CITY OF THE LILY 


9 


to tell him that the artist who had painted it was 
called Raphael, and that he had painted it on the 
top of a wine barrel. Umberto always liked the 
picture of Mary and the Child because when 
his mother put a shawl over her head she looked 
like the Madonna. His little sister was younger 
than he was; she was only seven; and she wasn’t 
much fun anyway, because she was only a girl. 
But his mother, who was so calm and sweet 
always, never hurried and never was cross, was 
a wonderful mother for a little boy to have. 

Of course, he was fond of his father, too. 
Often the big Rucellai took the little boy by 
the hand while he went about to talk to some 
friends. How their white teeth shone in their 
dark faces when they found something to laugh 
at! And they often laughed, for Italians are 
usually happy people. When Americans or 
Englishmen talk, they only talk with their 
voices; but Italians use their whole bodies. 
From down below little Umberto used to watch 
them throwing out their hands or shrugging 
their shoulders as they talked; or he watched 
the changing expressions on their faces as they 


10 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


listened to the speaker. "Per Baccol” someone 
would cry. “Ebbene!” or “Bastal” 

Often these conversations took place over 
glasses of wine in a little trattoria , which we 
would call a restaurant. Then Umberto was 
allowed to have some wine mixed with water. 
Plain water wasn’t thought to be good for little 
boys, and Umberto used to pretend that he 
really didn’t have water in his glass at all, but 
just wine like the men. 

Umberto’s father, like all the Florentines, was 
proud of his city. He loved to take his little 
son by the hand and tell him stories about its 
history as they walked through the streets. 
Perhaps they would go to the Piazza della 
Signoria, which is a large open space like a 
public square, and Rucellai would stop over a 
bronze plate on the pavement. 

“Here,” he said “the Florentines burned 
Savonarola.” 

Then he told Umberto of the good monk 
who lived close by in the Monastery of San 
Marco. Savonarola thought that the people of 
Florence were living wicked lives, and he 






THE CITY OF THE LILY 11 

preached to them to repent of their sins. After 
a while the people listened to him, and they 
brought all their pictures, their jewelry, their 
false hair, and their fine clothes, and made a 
huge bonfire in the middle of the Piazza della 
Signoria. But after a time they became tired 
of living without their old pleasures and they 
turned against the good monk. Then he and 
two others were shut up in the Palazzo Vecchio, 
or Old Palace. They were put way up in the 
tower, where Savonarola could see only through 
one small window. He stood at that window 
all the day and looked out over the city that he 
loved so well. And after a trial they found him 
guilty of many crimes that he had never done, 
and took him out to burn in the square. When 
it was too late, they were sorry for this deed 
and they made the mark in the pavement, so 
that they might never forget where he died. 

Umberto and his father went many times to 
the two great picture galleries of the city: the 
Uffizi and the Pitti. These galleries were once 
the palaces of nobles. They are on opposite 
sides of the river Arno, at either end of the 









12 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


Ponte Vecchio. People can cross from one gal¬ 
lery to the other by a passage which goes along 
the top of the bridge, directly over the shop of 
Umberto’s father. There is no city in the world 
which has so many great pictures painted by 
its own artists. Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, 
Botticelli, and Michael Angelo were all famous 
painters who lived in Florence. 

Long ago the city of Florence was ruled by 
the family of the Medici. “Medici” really 
means Doctor, and the family had been in 
various trades before they became rich. It was 
even said that the three balls which were in their 
coat of arms really meant pills which the family 
had sold when they were chemists. 

Until less than a hundred years ago all the 
cities of Italy were separately ruled. They con¬ 
quered the surrounding country, and often 
made war on neighboring cities. Florence used 
to fight against Pisa and Siena, other cities not 
far away; and Siena fought long wars with 
Genoa. Florence really was a republic, but 
the Medici family got control of the govern¬ 
ment. They were very interested in sculpture 


THE CITY OF THE LILY 


13 


and painting and became patrons of many fa¬ 
mous sculptors and artists. They invited them 
to live in Florence and gave them money 
enough so that they could always work at their 
art and would never find it necessary to go 
elsewhere. The Medici were buried in the 
church of San Lorenzo, and Michael Angelo 
made two beautiful statues to go over their tomb. 



Chapter II 


HOUSEKEEPING IN TOWN 



M EANWHILE, Urbana was pattering 
around at home, watching Maria in the 
kitchen. It was always lots of fun to watch 
the cooking. The place for cooking took al¬ 
most the whole of one wall. It was built of 
bricks and there were three little places where 
Maria could put pans to cook the food. The 
fire was made with charcoal. Maria would put 
a little paper and a few sticks on top of the grat¬ 
ing, and when they had caught fire, she would 
sprinkle little pieces of charcoal in the middle. 
She could open a little door at the front of 
the stove to help make a draft if the fire didn’t 
want to burn. Often to make a quicker fire, 
she fanned it through the opening. When it 
was burning nicely, she put her pan right on 
the burning charcoal and did her cooking. Of 
course the bottom of the pan got very black, but 


HOUSEKEEPING IN TOWN IS 

that couldn’t be helped. All the food had to 
be either boiled or fried in big pans made of 
copper, so heavy that little Urbana could hardly 
lift them. The inside of the pans was finished 
with tin, because if food is left in copper it 
becomes poisonous. 

Sometimes this coat of tin wore off the older 
pans, and then Maria had to be very careful 
to pour out the food as soon as it was cooked. 
When she had time, she took the pan to Giaco¬ 
mo in order to have it retinned. To enter 
Giacomo’s little shop, one went down several 
steps below the level of the street. As the door 
opened, it rang a bell in the back of the shop, 
and Giacomo would come out knowing he had 
a customer. Urbana liked to go there with 
Maria. There was always a soft gloom through 
which the reddish light of the copper shone 
faintly, and while Maria showed her pan to 
Giacomo, Urbana would touch softly the 
brocche and casserole , the pitchers and pans, 
which were piled everywhere about, watching 
the way the tip of her finger made a little spot 
of mist on the bright surface. 


16 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


Sometimes Maria took Urbana with her 
when she went to market. In the Mercato 
Vecchio, the Old Market, the women from 
the country sat in front of piles of vegetables, 
fruits, or fowls. If the sun was very hot they 
sometimes had cabbage leaves on their heads 
as sunshades. The chickens were all alive and 
were tied together by their feet in groups of 
about half a dozen. They lay on their sides, 
hot and thirsty in the blazing sun. Maria 
pointed out the chicken that she wanted, and 
it lifted the blue lid of its eye and uttered a 
feeble squawk or two as the woman pulled it 
out from among the others. Then all the rest 
started to flutter and squawk. For a few min¬ 
utes there was an uproar, until the uselessness 
of trying to move with their legs tied made all 
the hens settle down again into a heap of ruf¬ 
fled feathers only stirred by their breathing. 

All this time the countrywoman was point¬ 
ing out to Maria that the hen she had chosen 
was a beautiful one, young and fat. But now 
Maria pretended that she didn’t like it since she 
had seen it closer. She really wanted it all the 



The women from the country sat in front of 
piles of vegetables and fruits 


17 

























































18 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


time, and the woman knew she did, but the 
Italians like to take time in making a bargain. 
Finally the woman offered the hen to Maria 
for about twice as much as it was worth—saying 
that she was only setting so low a price as a 
great favor. Then Maria threw up her hands 
and said that such a price would ruin her, that 
for her part she did not think the chicken worth 
so much—and she named a sum, which was 
about half what she expected to give. 

Then, for a few minutes they both argued 
loudly; the countrywoman saying that to sell 
at such a price would mean starvation for her 
children, and Maria vowing that she wouldn’t 
give a cent more. Every now and then the 
countrywoman came down in her price, and 
Maria offered a little more, till finally both 
reached the price which they had known from 
the beginning was a fair rate for the hen. Then 
Maria agreed to take it, and the woman wrung 
its neck there and then, declaring that she had 
let it go at a great bargain. 

All this would seem to an American a great 
waste of time, but the countrywoman would 



HOUSEKEEPING IN TOWN 


19 


not have liked Maria to come to her price too 
soon. Both of them enjoyed the argument, and 
if Maria took a long time buying her chicken, 
the countrywoman liked her all the better for it. 

On another day Maria took Urbana to the 
flower market. Here the countrywomen stood 
with their big baskets of flowers. In the bright 
sunshine the masses of blue, pink, and yellow 
flowers looked very gay. Nearly always Maria 
bought some flowers for the house and some¬ 
times she let Urbana choose them. All Italians 
like flowers and keep big bowls of them in every 
room in the house. The name of Florence comes 
from the Italian word for flower. The city has 
chosen the lily as its sign. 

In one corner of the flower market straw hats 
were sold. The countrywomen who sold the 
hats had heaps of straw by their side, and while 
they waited for trade, they were busy braiding 
it into long ropes to be sewn later into more hats. 
All the way to the market they had walked 
with the baskets of hats on their heads and with 
their lingers busily braiding straw. All but 
the rich people carry things on their heads in 


20 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


Italy. The women, especially, can carry bas¬ 
kets of vegetables and; fruit, or jars of water, or 
great heaps of clothes, on their heads without 
ever letting them fall. They stand very straight 
and sway their bodies when the road is rough, 
but they keep their heads still. Thus they are 
able to carry a heavy load on their heads and use 
their hands for doing something else. Some¬ 
times they carry things in their hands, too, but 
usually they are leading a child or busy knitting 
or braiding straw. 

At the hat market were hats of all sizes 
and of all shapes. One of the women had 
arranged hers in a row so that the biggest was 
at the top, and the ones below got smaller 
and smaller till there were tiny hats just the 
size for dolls. Maria let Urbana try some of 
the small ones on her doll until she found one 
that fitted it exactly. 




Chapter III 


HOLIDAYS IN FLORENCE 

O N THE Saturday before Easter, Urbana’s 
father took her to the cathedral. The 
people of Florence are very proud of their beau¬ 
tiful Duomo, or cathedral, which is a large and 
beautiful church built from marble of many 
colors. It is called Santa Maria del Fiore, which 
means Saint Mary of the Flower. Another 
beautiful church in this city is named after the 
lily of Florence. 

The big dome of the cathedral can be seen 
from all over the city. When it was built many 
years ago, no one was quite sure how to 
build a dome. All the churches for a long 
time had been finished with a tower, and people 
were afraid that a dome might fall down on 
the building and destroy it. The man who 
built it was called Brunelleschi, and there is a 
statue of him near the church, looking up at his 


21 


22 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


dome. To make the dome still safer, the Flor¬ 
entines bound it with great chains. A few years 
ago an earthquake pulled some of these apart. 
It was thought then that, after such a shaking, 
it might fall, but it had been built so well that 
it was perfectly safe. 

Near the Duomo is the baptistery where 
the babies are baptized. The baptistery has 
wonderful bronze doors. When it was being 
built, the city had a competition to see who 
could make the most beautiful design for the 
doors. The man who won was called Ghiberti, 
and his doors were so beautiful that the judges 
said they were beautiful enough to be the doors 
of Heaven. 

But Urbana had not been brought to the ca¬ 
thedral to see these things. She had been 
brought because it was the Festa of the Carro, 
which means the Holiday of the Chariot. 

The Florentines have many festas, and this 
is one of the most exciting. Years and years 
ago a Florentine called Pazzi went to the Holy 
Land and brought back a light from the altar 
in the church in Jerusalem. He had a long, hard 


HOLIDAYS IN FLORENCE 


23 


journey bringing it home. To keep the light 
from going out, while on the way, he often 
rode facing the tail of his horse to shelter the 
flame from the wind. When he got to Florence 
he lit the lamp on the altar in the big cathedral 
from the light that he had brought. It has 
never gone out since that time. Every year since 
then the people of Florence have had a holiday 
to celebrate the bringing of the light. 

A carro, or chariot, is drawn by four white 
oxen with gilded horns, their backs covered 
with red cloths fringed with gold. The chariot 
is so high that all the street wires have to be 
taken down to let it pass. It stops before the 
cathedral doors which are wide open. Exactly 
at noon a toy dove comes down a long wire 
from the altar with a light in its mouth. It 
touches the fireworks on the chariot and they 
go off while the people shout with joy that 
Lent is over. Then suddenly the big bells in 
the Campanile boom out, then other bells ring, 
and everyone is happy. Hundreds of pigeons, 
which have been sitting quietly on the cathe¬ 
dral ledges, flutter into the air, frightened at the 


24 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


noise. But inside the cathedral the people 
watch to see how the little dove goes back to the 
altar. They think that if it goes back safely, 
there will be a good harvest, but if it stops on 
the way back, the next year will be poor. 

When some of the fireworks have gone off, 
the carro moves on to the street where the 
Pazzi family live. The rest of the fireworks 
are let off there, to honor them for bringing 
the altar light to Florence. 

Another festa is held on Assumption day in 
August. It is called the Giorno dei Grilli, or 
day of the crickets. Before daybreak the chil¬ 
dren go to the big Cascine gardens on the banks 
of the Arno, and have breakfast there on the 
grass. Then they play till evening. Before 
they come home, they try to catch some crickets 
in the grass. Each child has brought cages to 
put them in. The cages have a little piece of 
wood at the top and bottom, held together by 
little wires like a bird cage. Some of the pret¬ 
tier ones are bell-shaped and just have wood at 
the bottom. When the children have caught a 
grillo, they pull out one of the wires to let it 


HOLIDAYS IN FLORENCE 


25 


in the cage; then they put the wire in again and 
take the cricket home. They feed it with bits 
of lettuce leaf and the cricket sings to them. 

As well as the big Cascine gardens, Urbana 
had the Boboli gardens to play in. These are 
beautiful gardens near the Pitti palace. There 
is a lovely path between tall evergreen trees 
where Urbana used to walk holding tight to 
Maria’s hand. She looked at the trees to one 
side and saw a white marble statue; then a little 
further down there was one on the other side, 
then again, one on this side, and so on, all 
the way down the walk. The white statues 
were very beautiful against the dark green trees. 



Chapter IV 


HOUSEKEEPING IN THE COUNTRY 
NE spring little Umberto fell ill. His 



father and mother were worried about 

him. 

“The poverino, poor little one, will not get 
better in town,” they said. “We shall have to 
take him to the country.” 

Umberto’s mother had been a country girl 
from the district of Pisa, and they decided 
that he should visit his little cousins there. Pisa 
is a small town on the same river as Florence, 
but nearer the sea. In olden days it used to 
be a great seaport and fought long wars with 
the people of Florence and Genoa. To keep 
out its enemies by sea, it used to close its har¬ 
bor with a great chain, and once the Genoese 
carried off a part of the chain to their city to 
show that they had defeated the Pisans in war. 
Now Pisa is a quiet place, and usually people 


26 


HOUSEKEEPING IN THE COUNTRY 


27 


go there only to see its famous leaning tower. 
No one knows now whether the tower was once 
built straight and got crooked because it was 
built on marshy ground, or whether it was built 
crooked in the first place. It is a big round 
tower, very white, and it stands near the ca¬ 
thedral and the Baptistery which are also built 
of white marble. 

As the train pulled into Pisa, Umberto could 
see the three buildings from the window. He 
had often heard his mother talk about the lean¬ 
ing tower, and he could hardly wait for the train 
to stop so that he could go to see it. Some of 
his little cousins were there to meet him with 
his uncle who was his mother’s brother. They 
all went to the tower. 

There is a staircase inside the tower by which 
one can climb round and round to the top. The 
children found that when they were on the 
side which was leaning toward the ground, the 
slant of the steps pushed them against the out¬ 
side wall; but on the other side the slant pushed 
them against the inside wall. It all felt very 
odd, and they gave little shrieks as each new 


28 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


turn of the steps seemed to toss them first to 
one side and then to the other. Here and 
there they could look out of narrow windows 
to see how high they had climbed. At last 
they came out on the roof and saw, far away 
beneath them, the town of Pisa, the winding 
river Arno, and the flat plains of farm land 
stretching toward the sea. 

When they came down again, they went into 
the cathedral. Umberto’s mother made them 
look at the big bronze lamp that hung from the 
ceiling. She told them that hundreds of years 
ago a great man of Pisa, called Galileo, noticed 
the lamp swing back and forth after it had 
been lit. He counted how many times it 
swung, and how long it took to go from one 
side to the other. Then he tried experiments 
to see if other things hung up like the lamp 
would swing the same way, and he found that 
they did. From these experiments he made the 
laws of pendulums. Later still, other men 
learned to make clocks because they knew these 
laws that Galileo had discovered. Galileo be¬ 
came a famous man. He invented the telescope 


HOUSEKEEPING IN THE COUNTRY 29 

and with it made many discoveries about the 
stars. He spent many years of his life in 
Florence because the great family of the Medici 
were friendly to him. He is buried there in 
the church of Santa Croce. 

Next, the children went into the Baptistery. 
It is built in such a way that it has a wonderful 
echo. While they were there, some visitors gave 
their guide a lira to sing a few notes, some high 
and some low. These all came back repeated 
from the roof, blending like a chord from a 
big organ. 

Altogether, it was a wonderful day, and for 
Umberto it was only the beginning of some 
wonderful months in the country. It was 
behind a team of big white oxen that he rode 
to his uncle’s farm. They drew the cart by a 
big yoke about their necks. Round their horns 
and over their eyes dangled little strips of 
colored cloth which kept the flies from bother¬ 
ing them. Umberto’s Uncle Giovanni was a 
contadino\ that is, he had a small farm. He 
grew some wheat, some Indian corn, beans, 
grapes for making wine, and a few mulberry, 


30 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


olive, and fig trees. Umberto was never tired 
of watching what was done both inside the 
house and out in the fields. 

There were many children in his Uncle’s 
home, and one was a tiny baby. Like all 
Italians, Umberto loved babies, and he liked 
to see it put into its clothes. An Italian baby does 
not wear long clothes like ours, but is wound 
in bands of cloth which prevent it from kicking 
and reaching out with its hands. To wrap it 
up, his aunt put the baby’s arms close to its 
sides, took a long linen roll, and then, holding 
one end of the bandage tight, turned the baby 
over and over in her lap till the bandage reached 
its feet. Then she gave the linen a sharp pull, 
bent it back over the feet and fastened it. The 
baby probably got a little dizzy while this was 
going on, for it didn’t try to struggle, and once 
it was bound up, it couldn’t move at all. Some¬ 
times, when his aunt was busy, she hung the 
baby up like a little Indian papoose. 

The family had three meals a day. In the 
morning the men went out to work without 
eating anything till about nine o’clock. Then 



She turned the baby over and over in her lap 
until the bandage reached its feet 


31 












32 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


they came in for a breakfast of pollenta, a 
porridge made out of Indian corn, and a drink 
made of coffee mixed with chicory. At noon 
they had big bowls of vegetable soup called 
minestrone ; and at night they had bread or 
pollenta fried in olive oil. They ate very little 
meat, but they sometimes had salted herrings, 
and always there was fruit from the trees on 
the farm, or perhaps figs which were dried by 
stringing them in long rows from the roof, or 
by exposing them to the sun, flattened out on 
mats. Instead of water, they drank wine. 

If the children were hungry between meals, 
they were given pieces of dark bread with some 
olive oil spread over it. The Italians use olive 
oil, which is cheaper and easier to get than 
butter, both to spread on their bread and in 
cooking. The olive oil was made from the olives 
which had grown on his Uncle Giovanni’s 
trees, and the bread was made by his aunt from 
flour which had been made out of wheat grown 
in his fields. The miller who ground the flour 
had kept some of it as pay for grinding, and 
his uncle had brought the rest home. 





HOUSEKEEPING IN THE COUNTRY 


33 


His aunt kept the flour in a carved chest. 
There she also put the bread to rise when she 
was making it. She did not use yeast, but each 
week she kept back from her baking a piece of 
dough about the size of her hand. This she 
marked with the sign of the cross and put back 
into the flour chest to mix with the next week’s 
baking. The piece of dough made the bread 
rise just as if yeast had been mixed with it, and 
each week a piece of dough had been kept back 
like that in the old chest for more than a 
hundred years. 

His aunt cooked over three little charcoal 
fires just as Maria did in Florence, but to bake 
bread she had a brick oven. His uncle used 
to keep all the prunings of his olive trees and 
his vines, and these were used to light a fire 
inside the oven. Then the bread, shaped like 
large fat pancakes, was put into the oven beside 
the fire. Sometimes, when Umberto turned 
the loaves over, he saw little sticks stuck to the 
bottom, which had come from the oven floor. 

The family washing was done outside in the 
river. His aunt put the clothes in a big basket 



34 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


and then walked down to the water with the 
basket on her head. It did not seem to bother 
her to carry things on her head, and although 
the basket was big, she did not need to hold it 
with her hands to keep it steady. There were 
always other women washing their clothes at 
the river. They knelt down on the bank and 
spread their clothes in the stream. Then they 
beat them against the stones with a big flat 
stick. Afterwards, the clothes were laid on 
the grass to dry. The sun made them beauti¬ 
fully white. Then they were folded and car¬ 
ried home again in the basket on his aunt’s 
head. 

The water that was used for the house came 
from a little well. His aunt had a copper 
brocca for carrying the water. The brocca 
looked like a jar; it held just about a pail of 
water, but the narrow top kept the water from 
spilling out when she walked home with it on 
her head. Sometimes, one of the men got the 
water, but he carried two brocche, one hung at 
either end of a wooden yoke on his shoulders. 




Chapter V 


IN THE FIELDS 

T HE greatest fun for the little city boy was 
to go out into the fields and see how his 
uncle and the other farmers did their work. 

Umberto’s uncle had quite a big wheat field 
—almost eleven acres, or five hectares, as they 
call it. Fields in Italy would seem very small 
in America. There are so many people in Italy 
that each one can have only a little land. Each 
farmer raises just enough wheat for his own 
family to use. He does not raise it to sell, as 
the American farmers do on their great western 
wheat farms. 

On the evening of Saint John’s Day, which 
they call in Italy, the day of San Giovanni, and 
which comes on the twenty-fourth of June, 
all the children went out into the wheat field. 
Some of the children had little oil lamps and 
some had candles in their hands. They all car- 

35 


36 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


ried little crosses made of olive twigs. As they 
walked through the fields, they sang a little 
song asking San Giovanni to bless the wheat 
so that it would give a hundred grains for one. 
All around them the fireflies flashed in and out 
among the wheat, and to the parents watching 
from the house, the children’s torches looked 
like larger fireflies. 

When the wheat was ripe, Umberto’s uncle 
cut it with machinery much like that used in 
America except that it was smaller. But some 
of the other contadini who were poorer cut the 
grain by hand. All the grain had been cut by 
hand when his uncle was a boy. 

On these farms the men went into the fields, 
gathered a bunch of grain in one hand and cut 
it off with a sickle, which is a long curved knife. 
After that they pulled out a few stalks and 
used them to tie around the others. Then they 
dropped these and cut off another bunch till 
the whole field was done. 

Meanwhile, on the courtyard next the house, 
a thin paste made of clay had been rubbed over 
the cracks between the stones lest the ants 


IN THE FIELDS 


37, 

should creep through and carry off the grains 
of wheat. The men now brought the sheaves 
to a hollowed-out log on this threshing floor. 
With their hands they rubbed the wheat out 
of the heads that were on the straw used to tie 
the sheaf together; then they beat the head of 
the sheaf against the log so that most of the 
grain fell out. They then threw the sheaf to 
the women who stood by a bench where they 
beat it with a short stick so as to get out the 
rest of the wheat. The wheat fell down on 
the threshing floor, and the little sheaves of 
straw were stacked to make food for the cattle. 

Next, the chaff had to be taken out of the 
wheat. At the opposite end of the place where 
the wheat lay, the men hung a white sheet to 
keep the grain from scattering. Then, in the 
evening, when a steady breeze was blowing, 
they picked the wheat from the clay-covered 
court in big wooden shovels and threw it up 
into the air. “Swish! ” went the wheat up into 
the air; “Pt-pt-pt!” the grains struck against 
the sheet at the end. The chaff shone silver in 
the moonshine, and the cleaned wheat fell into 



38 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


golden heaps on the courtyard. It was then 
gathered and stored away for later use. 

The wine making was even more fun. Men, 
women, and children went up and down the 
rows of grapes cutting off the big purple clusters 
with knives or shears. 

Baskets stood between the rows—big baskets 
for the grown-up people and little baskets for 
the children. When the baskets were full, they 
carried them to big wooden vessels shaped like 
milk-cans and called bigoncie. When these 
were filled, they were taken to little carts drawn 
by oxen. The children climbed on behind and 
away they all went to the farm house. 

One by one, the bigoncie were emptied into 
a big vat which held about three hundred gal¬ 
lons. Then every day someone pressed down 
the grape skins which rose to the top. Some¬ 
times one of the men took off his shoes and 
stockings and trampled them down. 

Then, too, Umberto saw the men making 
olive oil. When the olives were turning black 
on the silvery-green olive trees, men climbed 
the trees to pick them. The picking began in 



It did not seem to bother them to carry heavy 
baskets on their heads 


39 








40 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 



November, but the olives kept on ripening 
till January, when the picking season ended. 

After being picked, the olives were spread 
out on the floor for about a week. Then they 
were ground. The grinder was run by one of 
the white oxen which went round and round 
turning the wheel. The olives were placed on 
a big stone slab and the grinder crushed the 
meat around them, although it was not set low 
enough to crush the pit inside. The crushed 
pulp was then placed in bags and these were 
taken off to a press which forced out the olive 
oil. The oil was run into huge conche, or earth¬ 
enware jars. Then the pulp was ground again, 
and from this a poorer oil was made. The 
first oil was used for cooking and spreading on 
bread; the poorer oil was used for burning 
in the lamps. 

But the most interesting things on the farm 
were the silkworms. Umberto’s aunt kept a 
few which were fed from the leaves of the 
mulberry trees. In the early spring tiny black 
worms hatched from the little gray eggs which 
looked like seeds, As soon as they were born, 


IN THE FIELDS 


41 


his aunt held young mulberry leaves over them, 
and the little worms at once crawled on and 
began to eat. 

The silkworms were kept on pieces of 
matting made of woven cane. In one corner 
of the room where they were, his aunt placed a 
big frame with four legs. All along this frame 
there were little holes where one could put 
pegs to support the pieces of wood on which 
the matting lay. At first, when the worms 
were quite small, one mat held them all; but 
as they grew bigger, they were spread out on 
more and more mats, till finally all the frame 
was full. 

Every day, fresh mulberry leaves were spread 
over the mats. The healthy worms at once left 
the old leaves and climbed on to the new; but 
the sickly worms did not try to leave the old 
leaves, and were thrown away with them. The 
worms ate all the soft parts of the leaves, and 
left all the little veins, so that the leaves they 
had eaten looked like fine pieces of lace. 

As the worms grew bigger, they grew too 
big for their skin. Then they stopped eating 


42 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


for a short time and remained very still with 
their front feet in the air. The old skin cracked 
and fell off, and the worm then began to eat 
again. 

Every time the worm lost its skin it became 
a little whiter, till finally the worms were fat 
white things about two inches long. As they 
ate the leaves, the sound of their rustling among 
them was like the sound of rain. It was lucky 
that as the worms had grown, the mulberry 
trees had grown bigger leaves, for now the 
worms ate them very fast. Then suddenly they 
stopped eating again, and Umberto’s aunt said: 

“Now they are ready to make their cocoons!” 

After the worms had stopped eating, they had 
begun to shrink into themselves, so that now 
they were only half as long as they had been. 
Umberto’s aunt held little twigs over them and 
the worms climbed on. Then she carried them 
where she had some gorse, which is a little bush 
that looks much like an evergreen tree except 
that it is very small and has yellow flowers. The 
worms left the twigs to crawl on the gorse. 

Finally, all the worms were on the gorse. 


IN THE FIELDS 


43 


They moved about it for a while till they found 
a good place for their cocoons; then once more 
they raised their heads in the air and were still. 

Then they began to move their heads from 
side to side, and Umberto saw that they were 
leaving a fine silk thread as they moved. First 
they threw out a few long threads to make 
themselves fast in the gorse; then they began 
to wrap the thread around themselves. Before 
very long, Umberto could see the worm only 
faintly through a thin silk mesh; then the worm 
disappeared altogether. How pretty it was 
then to see the gorse all hung with little egg- 
shaped balls of white and yellow silk! 

When all the worms had made their cocoons, 
Umberto helped his aunt to pick them. Most 
of the cocoons were then taken into the market, 
but a few were kept that there might be eggs 
for next year. 

What wonderful months Umberto had spent 
in the country! He was now quite strong again 
and it was time for him to go home. He was 
glad to go back to his mother and father, but 
how sorry he was to leave the farm! 



Chapter VI 


SIENA AND THE PALIO 
NE summer day the Rucellais all went to 



Siena for the Palio. Siena is a town not 
far from Florence, and the Palio is a horse race 
that is held there each year on August sixteenth. 
The race is named after the “Palio,” or banner, 
which is given to the winner. 

The city of Siena is divided into seventeen 
wntrade , or wards. Each ward has its own 
emblem, its own colors, and its own flag. There 
is “Lupa,” the Wolf, with its colors of black 
and white; “Girafla,” the giraffe, with red and 
white; “Oca,” the Goose, with red, white and 
green; “Aquila,” the Eagle, with blue and gold; 
“Chiocciola,” the Snail, with red, blue and yel¬ 
low. When the Palio first was held, all the 
contrade had horses in the race, but lately only 
ten have been allowed to take part, in order 
race course should not be so crowded. 



44 


SIENA AND THE PALIO 


45 


People come from all over Italy, and even from 
foreign countries, to see the race. 

All that day the Rucellais wandered about 
the streets. If a car or a team of oxen came 
along, people had to flatten themselves against 
the houses to let it go past. There are no 
sidewalks in Siena, and there were so many 
people that no one could hurry even if he 
wanted to. If an automobile met an ox-cart, it 
often had to back till it found a place wide 
enough to let the ox-cart go by. At meal times 
it was hard to get anything to eat, because 
although all the restaurants were serving meals 
as fast as they could, there were more people 
to feed than Siena ever saw at any other time. 

The next day was the day of the race. The 
Rucellais had decided that they wanted the 
Oca to win. Naturally, the Siennese support 
the contrada in which they happen to live, but 
the visitors are not particularly interested in 
any contrada, and are likely to choose the Oca, 
because it happens to have the same colors as 
the Italian flag. 

Each of the ten race horses is taken to the 


46 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


church in its own contrada and blessed before 
the race is run. Early the next morning, there¬ 
fore, the Rucellais went to the church of the 
Oca. It was not very long before the horse 
arrived, led by a boy in a beautiful costume of 
the kind that people used to wear hundreds of 
years ago when the race first began in Siena. 
At first the horse did not want to go into the 
church, and the priest asked the people not to 
shout, so that it wouldn’t be frightened. Finally 
it went all the way up to the altar where the 
priest poured some holy water on it. Then the 
boy took it out again. 

Before long the crowd had begun to hurry 
to the race course. The Rucellais had bought 
seats on a wooden stand which had been put 
up for the event. With difficulty, the Rucellais 
reached their places in the stand, and soon every 
seat around them was taken. 

Then the big bell in the Torre, the tower, 
began to thunder out that the race was begin¬ 
ning, and the people could hear a band and 
the drums away off. 

They entered the track. Every few yards, the 


SIENA AND THE PALIO 


47 


drummers beat a louder tatoo; the procession 
stopped, and the standard bearers began to wave 
their flags. Always at the end they threw them 
up into the air, and caught them. Then the 
procession began again. The riders took their 
horses through an arch into the Torre to toss up 
for the positions they would take in the race. 

When everything was ready, the bell 
stopped ringing and the riders came forth. 
How excited all were then, as they leaned for¬ 
ward to see who would have the outside and 
who would have the inside of the course. As 
they recognized the colors of the riders, the 
people shouted . . . “Oca!” “Giraffa!” 
“Lupa!” “Chiocciola! ” The noise frightened 
the horses. They reared and plunged. It took 
a long time to get them in a row. 

Then there was an instant’s pause; a pistol 
shot; and they were off! Each rider had a 
short whip, and from the start of the race to 
the finish he hit his own horse, or hit at a 
horse or rider near him. The men held their 
other hand before their face for fear they should 
be hurt, and hit back. Their hats were lined 



48 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


with steel, so their heads were safe. The horses, 
crazed with fright, dashed around taking the 
turns at such speed that many riders were 
thrown and had to roll out of the way of the 
oncoming racers. At one of the corners had 
been placed any mattresses that could be spared 
from the city hospital. Many a rider was 
hurled safely against them. 

Round and round the course they went, three 
times. The riderless horses went on without 
their riders, and every now and then, another 
rider was thrown off. Meanwhile, the specta¬ 
tors let out a continual roar of noise. 

“Oca is winning!” they cried. . . “No! 
Lupa has it!” . . . “Go on, Giraffa!” 

But Oca was winning after all, and when 
the race finished, he had come in first. 

It has been a very wonderful holiday for 
Umberto. No other country in the world— 
not even any other city in Italy—has a festa 
quite like the Palio. 


Chapter VII 


SOUTHERN ITALY 

O NE winter Umberto’s father went for a 
long trip to the South of Italy. 

The place to which they went first was 
Rome, the capital of Italy. Rome is a large 
city, built on seven hills on the banks of the 
river Tiber, another yellow river like the Arno. 

Hundreds of years ago, the Romans who 
lived there ruled over most of the world, and 
the Italians are very proud of its history. 
Then terrible tribes of savage men came into 
Italy and took Rome away from the Italians. 
The fine buildings fell to pieces and were 
forgotten. Dust came down and covered 
some of them so that they were completely 
hidden, and other houses were built on top of 
them. Now, however, people have dug down 
to what used to be the streets of Rome before 
the dust covered them and have found the 


49 


50 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


ruins of some of the buildings which were 
standing thousands of years ago. 

The building most people know about in 
Rome is the Colosseum. This is a big round 
structure made of stone, three stories high. 
Some of the stone has been carried away to 
make other buildings, but enough of it is left 
so that we can see how the Colosseum used to 
look. It is 615 feet long, and when it was new, 
it had seats for 50,000 people. Inside is a space, 
like an American football field, where the Ro¬ 
mans used to hold their games. 

Every time that a Roman general won a 
fight against his enemies, the people of Rome 
put up an arch of victory. Some of these are 
still standing. The ruins of the Forum, where 
they met to do business, can still be seen. 

Of course Umberto was taken to see these 
things, but what he liked to see more than any 
thing else was the statue of the wolf which 
took care of Romulus and Remus. When they 
were little children, they were left alone in the 
woods. A wolf found them and brought them 
up in her cave. After Romulus grew to man- 


SOUTHERN ITALY 


51 


hood he built Rome, and the Romans made a 
statue of the wolf with the two children and 
set it on a pillar. Then, years after, when 
Julius Caesar, one of the greatest Romans, was 
ruling the city, there was a terrible storm and 
the lightning struck the statue and cracked it. 
Everyone thought it meant that something 
dreadful would happen, and the next day Julius 
Caesar was killed. The statue is in a museum 
now, and the children could see where the 
lightning struck it. 

Then the children were taken to see the 
church of Saint Peter’s. It is the largest ca¬ 
thedral in the world and has a dome like that 
on the Duomo in Florence, only much bigger. 
When Brunelleschi’s dome really didn’t fall in, 
another great Florentine, Michael Angelo, built 
the still larger one on St. Peter’s. The children 
climbed up to the roof of the church. It is so 
big that as many people as one might find 
in a small Italian town have houses on the 
roof. Inside the church there are marks made 
on the floor to show the size of the other ca¬ 
thedrals in the world. The second largest is in 



52 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


Spain, but the next largest is in Milan, another 
Italian city. 

The country around Rome is marshy and 
unhealthy. A certain kind of mosquito lives 
in the marshes and the people whom it stings 
get a fever called malaria which makes them 
shake all over and leaves them weak. In the 
winter time the whole district is covered with 
water. When the water goes in the summer, the 
plains are wonderfully green and fertile. Be¬ 
cause of this, some people brave the danger of 
malaria to cultivate the land. For a long time 
the government has tried to drain the water 
from the fields, but weeds grow very quickly 
in the water and choke the canals which are 
dug to carry it off. The people keep these weeds 
down by a strange method. They have animals 
called water buffalo. In the summer these work 
just like oxen in the fields, but in the winter 
they swim about in the water, kicking and 
splashing and having a wonderful time. Their 
splashing breaks up the weeds, and when the 
canals are not choked, the water can drain off. 

The children went through all this marshy 



Farmers near Naples drive pretty colored carts 
drawn by donkeys 


53 







54 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


country on their way down to Naples. The 
city is built at the end of a big bay shaped 
like a half moon. The people look out on the 
beautiful islands of Ischia and Capri, and back 
of them rises the volcano of Vesuvius. 

The mountain of Vesuvius is shaped like a 
big triangle with the point knocked off. From 
the top, smoke rises gently to the blue sky. It 
is hard to believe that this beautiful mountain 
can do so much harm. But every now and then, 
it gets angry, and turns the whole harbor red 
from its flames. One can see how often it has 
thrown out ashes from the smaller mountain 
of ashes which rises beside it. 

A few years ago the top of Vesuvius blew 
off. When something like this happens, it is 
called an eruption. Hundreds of years ago, 
there was a great eruption, and the mountain 
sent out ashes and streams of melted rock, called 
lava, which completely covered several towns 
at its foot. One of these towns has been un¬ 
covered and now we can walk along the streets 
of Pompeii where the rich Romans built their 
pleasure houses. 


SOUTHERN ITALY 


55 


The streets are all clear again, and the walls 
of the houses are standing, but of course the 
roofs had fallen in with the weight of the 
ashes, and they have not been put on again. 
Umberto and his sister walked along the side¬ 
walks made out of great blocks of lava stone 
which had come from Vesuvius. Bright green 
lizards, sunning themselves on the wall, scuttled 
off when they came near. 

They went into some of the houses. These 
had been built about a square, with a garden 
and often a fountain in the middle. The walls 
were painted bright red or bright blue with 
pretty pictures in a band around the top. Then 
Umberto’s father took them into the museum 
to show them plaster casts of people and animals 
that had tried to get away from the ashes when 
the city was buried. A little girl had tried to 
hold her cloak over her head; a boy who was 
running away had just looked back at the 
mountain when the ashes covered him; a dog 
had put his muzzle between his paws as he 
felt himself choking. It was sad to think that 
this town had been covered up in a day. 



56 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


When they went back to Naples, Umberto’s 
father was interested in the jewelry made from 
cameos and coral, as he wanted some for his 
shop in Florence. The children were more in¬ 
terested in finding out that the pumice stone 
with which Maria often took dirt from their 
hands, had come from Naples. It is made out 
of the lava which has come from Vesuvius. 

The people of Naples keep goats for milk 
instead of cows, because goats can live very well 
on much less food than a cow. The milkmen 
in Naples do not leave a bottle of milk at each 
house but they came down the street with their 
goats. If the woman who is buying the milk 
wants to see her goat milked, it can climb the 
stairs just like a dog, and she can have it 
milked on her back porch. 

The farmers who came into Naples drove 
pretty colored carts drawn by donkeys with 
brightly colored harnesses. The donkeys often 
had over their heads straw hats with holes to 
let their long ears stick out. Umberto’s father 
told him that in the Island of Sicily, which is 
still further south and also belongs to Italy, 


SOUTHERN ITALY 


57 


the carts are colored even more brightly. The 
wheels and shafts are lemon yellow, and the 
cart has pictures on its side in red, blue, green, 
and yellow. 

Sometimes the pictures on the carts told the 
story of Garibaldi, whom all the Italians love, 
just as the Americans love George Washington 
or Abraham Lincoln. He was both a soldier 
and a sailor, and he got an army together and 
fought to free Italy from its enemies and make 
it a united nation with a king. 

The Sicilians love him especially, because he 
took their island away from France and gave 
it to Italy. Garibaldi’s soldiers were called the 
“Red Shirts.” Their gay costumes make bright 
pictures on the sides of the Sicilian carts. 



Chapter VIII 


NORTHERN ITALY 
MOTHER time Umberto with his father 



^-and mother and Urbana visited some of 
the cities in northern Italy, not far from his 
own city of Florence. 

He went once to Genoa and saw the city built 
on the side of a steep hill rising from the sea. 
He thought of the little boy who, long ago, used 
to sit on the hill and watch the ships go out 
of the harbor to far away lands. This little 
boy would go down to the harbor and ask the 
sailors who came in the ships about those strange 
countries. When he grew up he became a 
sailor, too. At that time people believed that 
the earth was flat and that if they went too 
far westward, they would fall off. Columbus 
believed that the earth was round and that by 
sailing west he could come to India. People 
laughed at Columbus then, but now they have 


58 


NORTHERN ITALY 


59 


put his statue facing the harbor of Genoa. He 
was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean and 
show people that there was land west of Europe. 
The discovery of America prepared people to 
believe that the earth was really round. Natur¬ 
ally the Italians are very proud that this discov¬ 
ery was made by one of their countrymen. 

In one of the squares of Genoa is the house 
in which Columbus lived when he was a boy. 
The city has kept it as a museum, for he was 
their greatest man. 

Then Umberto went to Venice. On the way 
he passed through Milan and saw the beautiful 
white cathedral with its hundreds of marble 
statues, looking like a gigantic frosted cake. 
Here, too, his father took him to see the beau¬ 
tiful painting of the Last Supper with which 
Leonardo da Vinci had decorated the wall of 
the Refectory. This was the dining room of 
the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which 
means Saint Mary of Mercies. 

When they went on to Venice, they passed 
over a long bridge which connects Venice with 
the mainland, for Venice was built on piles in 


60 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


the sea. For this reason, instead of streets be¬ 
tween the houses, there are canals of water. 
When the people want to come out of their 
houses, they go along these canals in what are 
called gondolas. A gondola is like a long, nar¬ 
row black boat, except that the front of it rises 
high in the air and ends in a sharp piece of black 
metal. This is useful in pushing other gondolas 
away if they come too near. The man who 
rows is called a gondolier and he moves the 
boat forward with a long oar. The people who 
ride in a gondola sit on seats in the middle. 

One day Umberto’s father took a gondola 
and went out to the Island of Murano. It is 
here that the Venetians make the pretty glass 
which is sold all over the world. They were 
taken into a big glass factory, and there they 
saw the best glass blower in Murano at work. 

He was standing near a big furnace which 
melted the glass so that he could shape it as 
he wanted. In order to make the glass still 
better to work with, the people of Murano melt 
some gold in with the glass. 

This glass blower had two boys to help him, 


NORTHERN ITALY 


61 


because all the work had to be done quickly 
while the glass was hot. The blower had a 
pipe in his mouth as if he were going to blow 
bubbles. First one of the boys laid some glass 
on his pipe and he blew air into it so that it 
curved out like the body of a swan. Then he 
laid down his pipe. With another instrument 
he pulled out one end so as to make the curved 
neck of the swan, and he flattened the piece at 
the end to make its head. Then the boys gave 
him glass beads to put in as eyes. After that, 
they gave him some more glass and he made the 
wings and fastened thereto the sides of the 
swan. All this was done in a very few minutes. 

As soon as the swan was finished, one boy 
laid it on a table beside those he had already 
made; the other laid some more glass on the 
pipe to use in making another. 

In the factory they saw beautiful goblets and 
pitchers made of white and colored glass. Some 
were shaped like birds with outspread wings, 
or fishes with twisted tails. Urbana’s father 
bought her some beautiful glass beads. 

Venice is on the Adriatic sea, and years 



62 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


she was famous as a sea-going nation. Her 
boats traded in all the ports of the world, and 
her citizens became very rich. The ruler of 
the city in those days was called a Doge. Every 
year, the Doge and the senators used to go in 
solemn procession to the sea and throw in a 
golden ring. Their city, they said, was married 
to the Adriatic; no other city should rule the sea. 

Venice is not a busy city any more, but people 
go there because it is so beautiful. It is pretty to 
see the gondolas slipping down the grand canal. 
Often at night, a gondola lies out in the water 
all lit up with colored lanterns, with people 
singing and playing in the moonlight. Then 
other gondolas come out and lie near, listening 
to the music. Away across the water, one can 
see the Doge’s Palace, and the pillar with the 
winged lion which is the emblem of the city. 

There is one square in the city which is like 
a great open-air living room. It lies in front 
of the beautiful cathedral of St. Mark. Outside 
as well as inside this cathedral are brightly col¬ 
ored pictures made out of thousands of little 
stones. This kind of work is called mosaic, and 




NORTHERN ITALY 


63 


Venice is famous for it. People from all over 
the world come to see these mosaics. 

On one side of St. Mark’s is a tower which 
one can climb to get a view over the city. About 
thirty years ago, the tower fell down directly 
across the square. Fortunately, no one was 
hurt, and now the Italians have built it again 
just as it was before. On the other side of the 
square is a building which is called the Mercato 
Vecchio, or old market. On the top of this 
building is a very marvelous clock. The face 
of the clock is near the roof of the building, 
and above it are the figures of two men, 
standing on each side of a big iron bell. Exactly 
at twelve o’clock, these men strike the bell 
twelve times so that it rings out all over the 
square. There are always many people in the 
square, and at twelve o’clock they all suddenly 
become still and look up, waiting for the clock 
to strike. 

But the thing that Umberto and his sister 
liked best to do in Venice was to feed the 
pigeons. Hundreds of pigeons live around St. 
Marks. They are never disturbed, so they are 


64 


CHILDREN OF ITALY 


very tame. Umberto and his sister used to buy 
corn from the people who were selling it in the 
square. They would put some on their should¬ 
ers and hold some out on their hands. If they 
kept still enough, the pigeons would settle on 
their arms and heads to peck the grain. Urbana 
held grains of corn in her mouth, and the 
pigeons pecked at her lips as though they were 
kissing her. 





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